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If you are like me you spend a lot of time reading articles and websites. No doubt if you have ever been enticed to join a free e-course or download an e-book you would have been presented with a title like this at some point:

There is even a section for 7 tips at Ezine Articles.

It’s no coincidence that you always see old lucky number 7 appearing in these titles. I’ve assumed based purely on the frequency of the number 7 that it made smart marketing sense to use this number. No doubt there were tests done on the human brain that proved this, or even research by marketers, given they are so fond of testing, would have proven that the number 7 was more effective than any other number in sales headlines and copy.

Just recently I read a section in Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point book that gave me a little more understanding about the rule of 7.

Malcolm Gladwell: As human beings we can only handle so much information at once. Once we pass a certain boundary, we become overwhelmed.

Malcolm mentioned this phrase as part of a chapter on the power of context and preceding the above quote in his book he recounted many psychological test results that proved the human brain can distinguish to about 6 or 7 points maximum before things start to get confused. Our capacity for clarity peaks at 7 and thus as a marketeer if we want to get a message across clearly we should use groups of no more than 7.

An interesting example in Malcolm’s book was that of the telephone number. Bell (a North American telephone company) wanted to make phone numbers as long as possible to maximise capacity, however they also had to be able to be memorized by the public for them to be useful. Once you get past 7 digit phone numbers people would start making more errors - that’s why mobile phone numbers are so damned hard to remember - too many digits!

No doubt there is plenty of interesting research results and information on the number 7. Perhaps some of my readers have read more about this magic number?